$1.26 million for one Instagram post: the SEC crypto ledger

Kim Kardashian was paid $250,000 for one Instagram post. Settling the resulting charge cost her $1.26 million.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the settlement on 3 October 2022. Kardashian had promoted EthereumMax tokens without disclosing the payment. She agreed to pay roughly $260,000 in disgorgement and prejudgment interest, plus a $1,000,000 civil penalty, and accepted a three-year ban on promoting crypto asset securities.

Chair Gary Gensler put the principle in a single sentence in the Commission’s press release: “Ms. Kardashian’s case also serves as a reminder to celebrities and others that the law requires them to disclose to the public when and how much they are paid to promote investing in securities.”

One qualifier applies to every SEC matter in this article, and it applies without exception. All of them were resolved by settlement, on terms under which the defendant neither admitted nor denied the Commission’s findings. A settlement is not a finding of liability by a court. Where a court has ruled on the merits of a celebrity crypto promotion claim — as one did in the FTX litigation — the celebrities mostly won.

The first cases: Mayweather, Khaled and Centra Tech

The template was set on 29 November 2018, when the SEC brought what it described as its first cases charging celebrities with unlawfully touting initial coin offerings.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. had been paid $300,000 in total: $100,000 from Centra Tech, plus $200,000 from two other ICOs. He paid $300,000 in disgorgement, a $300,000 penalty and $14,775 in interest, and accepted a three-year promotion ban.

DJ Khaled had been paid $50,000 by Centra Tech. He paid $50,000 in disgorgement, a $100,000 penalty and $2,725 in interest, with a two-year ban.

Stephanie Avakian, then co-director of the SEC’s enforcement division, framed the harm in terms of what the audience could not see: “With no disclosure about the payments, Mayweather and Khaled’s ICO promotions may have appeared to be unbiased, rather than paid endorsements.”

Note the structure, because it repeats. The Commission is not, in these cases, alleging that the celebrity knew the underlying venture was a fraud. The charge is failing to disclose the payment. That is a lower bar for the regulator, and it is why these matters settle.

Eight names and one token

On 22 March 2023 the SEC charged Justin Sun and eight celebrities in connection with the touting of Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT) tokens.

The eight were Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, DeAndre Cortez Way (Soulja Boy), Austin Mahone, Michele Mason (Kendra Lust), Miles Parks McCollum (Lil Yachty), Shaffer Smith (Ne-Yo) and Aliaune Thiam (Akon).

Six settled, paying more than $400,000 combined in disgorgement, prejudgment interest and penalties. Per the SEC’s release, Soulja Boy and Austin Mahone did not settle.

The allegation that distinguishes this matter from the earlier ones concerns intent about the disclosure itself. Enforcement director Gurbir Grewal said Sun “paid celebrities with millions of social media followers to tout the unregistered offerings, while specifically directing that they not disclose their compensation”. That is the Commission’s allegation, made in a press release announcing charges. It is not a judicial finding.

The FTX defendants mostly won, and that matters

The best-known celebrity crypto case of them all was never an SEC action at all. It was a private class action in Florida, and it went badly for the plaintiffs.

On 7 May 2025, US District Judge K. Michael Moore, in the Southern District of Florida, dismissed 12 of the 14 claims brought against Stephen Curry, Larry David, Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Kevin O’Leary, Udonis Haslem, David Ortiz, Shohei Ohtani and Naomi Osaka. Only Florida and Oklahoma state securities claims survived.

The reasoning is the part worth reading. According to an analysis of the ruling published by Baker McKenzie’s blockchain practice, the court held that allegations the defendants were “uninformed, negligent, or even reckless” — even that they “look like idiots” — were “insufficient to establish that Defendants had actual knowledge” of FTX’s fraud.

Read plainly: appearing in an advertisement for something that later turns out to be a fraud is not, without more, a basis for liability. The plaintiffs needed actual knowledge and, on the pleadings before that court, they did not have it.

Any honest ledger has to record that outcome with the same weight it gives the settlements. The FTX endorsers were not found liable of anything.

One of them paid anyway. In July 2025, Shaquille O’Neal settled the FTX class action for $1.8 million — $750,000 in cash plus $1.05 million in FTX equity — while denying wrongdoing. Reporting on the settlement noted the figure exceeded what he had been paid to promote FTX in the first place. That is a rational commercial decision about the cost of litigation, and it is not evidence of anything else.

What the pattern actually shows

Set the cases side by side and three things emerge.

First, the enforceable wrong is almost always non-disclosure, not endorsement. The SEC’s theory in the Mayweather, Khaled, Kardashian and Tron matters is that a paid promotion presented as an unpaid opinion misleads the audience about the promoter’s incentive. Avakian’s line about promotions that “may have appeared to be unbiased” is the whole case in nine words.

Second, the penalties are calibrated to the payment, not to investor losses. Mayweather was paid $300,000 and disgorged $300,000. Khaled was paid $50,000 and disgorged $50,000. Kardashian was paid $250,000 and disgorged roughly $260,000 with interest. The additional civil penalties — $300,000, $100,000, $1,000,000 — are the part that hurts, and the escalation between 2018 and 2022 is visible on the face of the numbers.

Third, the ban is the sanction with teeth for a working promoter. Three years off crypto asset securities promotion is three years of a revenue line closed.

The parallel American regime, the FTC’s Endorsement Guides, last revised in 2023, imposes the same basic obligation outside the securities context: anyone paid or given something of value must disclose it clearly and conspicuously, in a place users “aren’t likely to miss it”, and the disclosure must name the brand. The Guides give no safe harbour. In August 2024, on a unanimous 5–0 vote, the FTC also finalised a rule banning fake reviews and testimonials, including AI-generated ones, and the sale or purchase of fake social media influence indicators.

None of that is new law in spirit. The disclosure duty predates crypto by decades. What the ledger records is the price of ignoring it, and how that price moved: $152,725 paid out on a $50,000 endorsement in 2018, $1.26 million on a $250,000 endorsement in 2022, and a court in 2025 declining to hold that endorsing a fraud is the same thing as committing one.

For context on the size of the payments themselves: the closest documented comparison in this archive is Kendall Jenner’s $250,000 fee for a single Fyre Festival Instagram post in 2016 — the same headline rate Kardashian received for a single EthereumMax post, for the same unit of work.

Sources

1. SEC press release: Kim Kardashian charged for unlawfully touting crypto security
2. SEC press release: Floyd Mayweather Jr. and DJ Khaled settle ICO touting charges
3. SEC press release: charges against Justin Sun and eight celebrities over Tron
4. Baker McKenzie analysis of the May 2025 dismissal of most FTX celebrity claims
5. Forbes on Shaquille O'Neal's $1.8 million FTX class action settlement
6. The FTC's Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking
7. FTC final rule banning fake reviews and testimonials, August 2024
8. Forbes on Kendall Jenner's Fyre Festival clawback settlement